PURPLE CROCUSES
Seduced by El Niño’s eastern balm,
they bloom early.
One morning they appear, sudden
like shining wet paint
splashed across the newly green
lawn.
They’ve naturalized, their opulent
purples
each year more abundant with
drunken bees
buzzing between six pointed
petals.
Purple crocuses with shocking
orange centers
were here before I stuck my shovel
in this dirt,
perhaps before the old widow,
Elvira Lockwood,
who dug here before me and left a
wind chime
for her ghost to breathe against
while the red-throated house
finches warble,
who, a neighbor woman told me,
loved birds and flowers
and planted the climbing rose of
pale pink and milk
that never bloomed for us until
our daughter’s birth.
Even as the hands touch wood, say
this house is mine—
the barn, the fence, the rose
trellis my love built
for the warm-petalled Joseph’s
coat to climb,
the dirt under my feet—these
purple crocuses
spread under the fence to share
themselves with neighbors,
unownable fleeting musical notes
for the eye to hear.
@Aliki Barnstone
